Whether these canoes are like any in Tartary or China or Japan, I do not know. My only quest for special information of that character proved disappointing. One man in a city of British Columbia is said to have studied such matters more deeply and to more purpose than all the others, but those who referred me to him cautioned me that he was eccentric.
"You don't know where these Indians came from, eh?" thesavantreplied to my first question. "Do you know how oyster-shells got on top of the Rocky Mountains? You don't, eh? Well, I know a woman who went to a dentist's yesterday to have eighteen teeth pulled. Do you know why women prefer artificial teeth to those which God has given them? You don't, eh? Why, man, you don't know anything."
While we were—or he was—conversing, a laboring-man who carried a sickle came to the open door, and was asked what he wanted.
"I wish to cut your thistles, sir," said he.
"Thistles?" said thesavant, disturbed at the interruption. "—— the thistles! We are talking about Indians."
Nevertheless, when the laborer had gone, he had left the subject of thistles uppermost in thesavant'smind, and the conversation took so erratic a turn that it might well have been introduced hap-hazard intoTristram Shandy.
"About thistles," said thesavant, laying a gentle hand upon my knee. "Do you know that they are the Scotchmen's totems? Many years ago a Scotchman, sundered from his native land, must needs set up his totem, a thistle, here in this country; and now, sir, the thistle is such a curse that I am haled up twice a year and fined for having them in my yard."
But nearly enough has been here said of the native population. Though the Indians boast dozens of tribal names, and almost every island on the coast and village in the interior seems the home of a separate tribe, they will be found much alike—dirty, greasy, sore-eyed, short-legged, and with their unkempt hair cut squarely off, as if a pot had been upturned over it to guide the operation. The British Columbians do not bother about their tribal divisions, but use the old traders' Chinook terms, and call every male a "siwash" and every woman a "klootchman."
Since the highest Canadian authority upon the subject predicts that the northern half of the Cordilleran ranges will admit of as high a metalliferous development as that of the southern half in our Pacific States, it is important to review what has been done in mining, and what is thought of the future of that industry in the province. It may almost be said that the history of gold-mining there is the history of British Columbia. Victoria, the capital, was a Hudson Bay post established in 1843, and Vancouver, Queen Charlotte's, and the other islands, as well as the main-land, were of interest to only a few white men as parts of a great fur-trading field with a small Indian population. The first nugget of gold was found at what is now called Gold Harbor, on the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands, by an Indian woman, in 1851. A part of it, weighing four or five ounces, was taken by the Indians to Fort Simpson and sold. The Hudson Bay Company, which has done a little in every line of business in its day, sent a brigantine to the spot, and found a quartz vein traceable eighty feet, and yielding a high percentage of gold. Blasting was begun, and the vessel was loaded with ore; but she was lost on the return voyage. An American vessel, ashore at Esquimault, near Victoria, was purchased, renamed theRecovery, and sent to Gold Harbor with thirty miners, who worked the vein until the vessel was loaded and sent to England. News of the mine travelled, and in another year a small fleet of vessels came up from San Francisco; but the supply was seen to be very limited, and after $20,000 in all had been taken out, the field was abandoned.
In 1855 gold was found by a Hudson Bay Company's employé at Fort Colville, now in Washington State, near the boundary. Some Thompson River (B. C.) Indians who went to Walla Walla spread a report there thatgold, like that discovered at Colville, was to be found in the valley of the Thompson. A party of Canadians and half-breeds went to the region referred to, and found placers nine miles above the mouth of the river. By 1858 the news and the authentication of it stirred the miners of California, and an astonishing invasion of the virgin province began. It is said that in the spring of 1858 more than twenty thousand persons reached Victoria from San Francisco by sea, distending the little fur-trading post of a few hundred inhabitants into what would even now be called a considerable city; a city of canvas, however. Simultaneously a third as many miners made their way to the new province on land. But the land was covered with mountains and dense forests, the only route to its interior for them was the violent, almost boiling, Fraser River, and there was nothing on which the lives of this horde of men could be sustained. By the end of the year out of nearly thirty thousand adventurers only a tenth part remained. Those who did stay worked the river bars of the lower Fraser until in five months they had shipped from Victoria more than half a million dollars' worth of gold. From a historical point of view it is a peculiar coincidence that in 1859, when the attention of the world was thus first attracted to this new country, the charter of the Hudson Bay Company expired, and the territory passed from its control to become like any other crown colony.
In 1860 the gold-miners, seeking the source of the "flour" gold they found in such abundance in the bed of the river, pursued their search into the heart and almost the centre of that forbidding and unbroken territory. The Quesnel River became the seat of their operations. Two years later came another extraordinary immigration. This was not surprising, for 1500 miners had in one year (1861) taken out $2,000,000 in gold-dust from certain creeks in what is called the Cariboo District, and one can imagine (if one does not remember) what fabulous tales were based upon this fact. The second stampede was of persons from all over the world, but chiefly from England, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. After that there were new "finds" almost every year, and the miners worked gradually northward until, about 1874, they had travelled through the province, in at one end and out at the other, and were working the tributaries of the Yukon River in the north, beyond the 60th parallel. Mr. Dawson estimates that the total yield of gold between 1858 and 1888 was $54,108,804; the average number of miners employed each year was 2775, and the average earnings per man per year were $622.
In his report, published by order of Parliament, Mr. Dawson says that while gold is so generally distributed over the province that scarcely a stream of any importance fails to show at least "colors" of the metal, the principal discoveries clearly indicate that the most important mining districts are in the systems of mountains and high plateaus lying to the south-west of the Rocky Mountains and parallel in direction with them.
This mountain system next to and south-west of the Rockies is called, for convenience, the Gold Range, but it comprises a complex belt "of several more or less distinct and partly overlapping ranges"—the Purcell, Selkirk, and Columbia ranges in the south, and in the north the Cariboo, Omenica, and Cassiar ranges. "This series or system constitutes the most important metalliferous belt of the province. The richest gold fields are closely related to it, and discoveries of metalliferous lodes are reported in abundance from all parts of it which have been explored. The deposits already made known are very varied in character, including highly argentiferous galenas and other silver ores and auriferous quartz veins." This same authority asserts that the Gold Range is continued by the Cabinet, Coeur d'Alene, and Bitter Root mountains in our country. While there is no single well-developed gold field as in California, the extent of territory of a character to occasion a hopeful search for gold is greater in the province than in California. The average man of business to whom visitors speak of the mining prospects of the province is apt to declare that all that has been lacking is the discovery of one grand mine and the enlistment of capital (from the United States, they generally say) to work it. Mr. Dawson speaks to the same point, and incidentally accounts for the retarded development in his statement that one noteworthy difference between practically the entire area of the province and that of the Pacific States has been occasioned by the spread and movement of ice over the province during the glacial period. This produced changes in the distribution of surface materials and directions of drainage, concealed beneath "drifts" the indications to which prospectors farther south are used to trust, and by other means obscured the outcrops of veins which would otherwise be well marked. The dense woods, the broken navigation of the rivers, in detached reaches, the distance from the coast of the richest districts, and the cost of labor supplies and machinery—all these are additional and weighty reasons for the slowness of development. But this was true of the past and is not of the present, at least so far as southern British Columbia is concerned. Railroads are reaching up into it from our country and down from the transcontinental Canadian Railway, and capital, both Canadian and American, is rapidly swelling an already heavy investment in many new and promising mines. Here it is silver-mining that is achieving importance.
Other ores are found in the province. The iron which has been located or worked is principally on the islands—Queen Charlotte, Vancouver, Texada, and the Walker group. Most of the ores are magnetites, and that which alone has been worked—on Texada Island—is of excellent quality. The output of copper from the province is likely soon to become considerable. Masses of it have been found from time to time in various parts of the province—in the Vancouver series of islands, on the main-land coast, and in the interior. Its constant and rich association with silver shows lead to be abundant in the country, but it needs the development of transport facilities to give it value. Platinum is more likely to attain importance as a product in this than in any other part of North America. On the coast the granites are of such quality and occur in such abundance as to lead to the belief that their quarrying will one day be an important source of income, and there are marbles, sandstones, and ornamental stones of which the same may be said.
One of the most valuable products of the province is coal, the essential in which our Pacific coast States are the poorest. The white man's attention was first attracted to this coal in 1835 by some Indians who brought lumps of it from Vancouver Island to the Hudson Bay post on the main-land, at Milbank Sound. TheBeaver, the first steamship that stirred the waters of the Pacific, reached the province in 1836, and used coal that was found in outcroppings on the island beach. Thirteen years later the great trading company brought out a Scotch coal-miner to look into the character and extent of the coal find, and he was followed by other miners and the necessary apparatus for prosecuting the inquiry. In the mean time the present chief source of supply at Nanaimo, seventy miles from Victoria and about opposite Vancouver, was discovered, and in 1852 mining was begun in earnest. From the very outset the chief market for the coal was found to be San Francisco.
The original mines are now owned by the Vancouver Coal-mining and Land Company. Near them are the Wellington Mines, which began to be worked in 1871. Both have continued in active operation from their foundation, and with a constantly and rapidly growing output. A third source of supply has very recently been established with local and American capital in what is called the Comox District, back of Baynes Sound, farther north than Nanaimo, on the eastern side of Vancouver Island. These new works are called the Union Mines, and, if the predictions of my informants prove true, will produce an output equal to that of the older Nanaimo collieries combined. In 1884 the coal shipped from Nanaimo amounted to 1000 tons for every day of the year, and in 1889 the total shipment had reached 500,000 tons. As to the character of the coal, I quote again from Mr. Dawson's report on the minerals of British Columbia, published by the Dominion Government:
"Rocks of cretaceous age are developed over a considerable area in British Columbia, often in very great thickness, and fuels occur in them in important quantity in at least two distinct stages, of which the lower and older includes the coal measures of the Queen Charlotte Islands and those of Quatsino Sound on Vancouver Island, with those of Crow Nest Pass in the Rocky Mountains; the upper, the coal measures of Nanaimo and Comox, and probably also those of Suquash and other localities. The lower rocks hold both anthracite and bituminous coal in the Queen Charlotte Islands, but elsewhere contain bituminous coal only. The upper have so far been found to yield bituminous coal only. The fuels of the tertiary rocks are, generally speaking, lignites, but include also various fuels intermediate between these and true coals, which in a few places become true bituminous coals."
"Rocks of cretaceous age are developed over a considerable area in British Columbia, often in very great thickness, and fuels occur in them in important quantity in at least two distinct stages, of which the lower and older includes the coal measures of the Queen Charlotte Islands and those of Quatsino Sound on Vancouver Island, with those of Crow Nest Pass in the Rocky Mountains; the upper, the coal measures of Nanaimo and Comox, and probably also those of Suquash and other localities. The lower rocks hold both anthracite and bituminous coal in the Queen Charlotte Islands, but elsewhere contain bituminous coal only. The upper have so far been found to yield bituminous coal only. The fuels of the tertiary rocks are, generally speaking, lignites, but include also various fuels intermediate between these and true coals, which in a few places become true bituminous coals."
It is thought to be more than likely that the Comox District may prove far more productive than the Nanaimo region. It is estimated that productive measures underlie at least 300 square miles in the Comox District, exclusive of what may extend beyond the shore. The Nanaimo area is estimated at 200 square miles, and the product is no better than, if it equals, that of the Comox District.
Specimens of good coal have been found on the main-land in the region of the upper Skeena River, on the British Columbia water-shed of the Rockies near Crow Nest Pass, and in the country adjacent to the Peace River in the eastern part of the province. Anthracite which compares favorably with that of Pennsylvania has been found at Cowgitz, Queen Charlotte Islands. In 1871 a mining company began work upon this coal, but abandoned it, owing to difficulties that were encountered. It is now believed that these miners did not prove the product to be of an unprofitable character, and that farther exploration is fully justified by what is known of the field. Of inferior forms of coal there is every indication of an abundance on the main-land of the province. "The tertiary or Laramie coal measures of Puget Sound and Bellingham Bay" (in the United States) "are continuous north of the international boundary, and must underlie nearly 18,000 square miles of the low country about the estuary of the Fraser and in the lower part of its valley." It is quite possible, since the better coals of Nanaimo and Comox are in demand in the San Francisco market, even at their high price and with the duty added, that these lignite fields may be worked for local consumption.
Already the value of the fish caught in the British Columbian waters is estimated at $5,000,000 a year, and yet the industry is rather at its birth than in its infancy. All the waters in and near the province fairly swarm with fish. The rivers teem with them, the straits and fiords and gulfs abound with them, the ocean beyond is freighted with an incalculable weight of living food, which must soon be distributed among the homes of the civilized world. The principal varieties of fish are the salmon, cod, shad, white-fish, bass, flounder, skate, sole, halibut, sturgeon, oolachan, herring, trout, haddock, smelts, anchovies, dog-fish, perch, sardines, oysters, crayfish shrimps, crabs, and mussels. Of other denizens of the water, the whale, sea-otter, and seal prove rich prey for those who search for them.
The main salmon rivers are the Fraser, Skeena, and Nasse rivers, but the fish also swarm in the inlets into which smaller streams empty. The Nimkish, on Vancouver Island, is also a salmon stream. Setting aside the stories of water so thick with salmon that a man might walk upon their backs, as well as that tale of the stage-coach which was upset by salmon banking themselves against it when it was crossing a fording-place, there still exist absolutely trustworthy accounts of swarms which at their height cause the largest rivers to seem alive with these fish. In such cases the ripple of their back fins frets the entire surface of the stream. I have seen photographs that show the fish in incredible numbers, side by side, like logs in a raft, and I have the word of a responsible man for the statement that he has gotten all the salmon needed for a small camp, day after day, by walking to the edge of a river and jerking the fish out with a common poker.
There are about sixteen canneries on the Fraser, six on the Skeena, three on the Nasse, and three scattered in other waters—River Inlet and Alert Bay. The total canning in 1889 was 414,294 cases, each of 48 one-pound tins. The fish are sold to Europe, Australia, and eastern Canada. The American market takes the Columbia River Salmon. Around $1,000,000 is invested in the vessels, nets, trawls, canneries, oil-factories, and freezing and salting stations used in this industry in British Columbia, and about 5500 men are employed. "There is no difficulty in catching the fish," says a local historian, "for in some streams they are so crowded that they can readily be picked out of the water by hand." However, gill-nets are found to be preferable, and the fish are caught in these, which are stretched across the streams, and handled by men in flat-bottomed boats. The fish are loaded into scowsand transported to the canneries, usually frame structures built upon piles close to the shores of the rivers. In the canneries the tins are made, and, as a rule, saw-mills near by produce the wood for the manufacture of the packing-cases. The fish are cleaned, rid of their heads and tails, and then chopped up and loaded into the tins by Chinamen and Indian women. The tins are then boiled, soldered, tested, packed, and shipped away. The industry is rapidly extending, and fresh salmon are now being shipped, frozen, to the markets of eastern America and England. My figures for 1889 (obtained from the VictoriaTimes) are in all likelihood under the mark for the season of 1890. The coast is made ragged by inlets, and into nearly every one a watercourse empties. All the larger streams are the haven of salmon in the spawning season, and in time the principal ones will be the bases of canning operations.
The Dominion Government has founded a salmon hatchery on the Fraser, above New Westminster. It is under the supervision of Thomas Mowat, Inspector of Fisheries, and millions of small fry are now annually turned into the great river. Whether the unexampled run of 1889 was in any part due to this process cannot be said, but certainly the salmon are not diminishing in numbers. It was feared that the refuse from the canneries would injure the "runs" of live fish, but it is now believed that there is a profit to be derived from treating the refuse for oil and guano, so that it is more likely to be saved than thrown back into the streams in the near future.
The oolachan, or candle-fish, is a valuable product of these waters, chiefly of the Fraser and Nasse rivers. They are said to be delicious when fresh, smoked, or salted, and I have it on the authority of the little pamphlet "British Columbia," handed me by a government official, that "their oil is considered superior to cod-liver oil, or any other fish-oil known." It is said that this oil is whitish, and of the consistency of thin lard. It is used as food by the natives, and is an article of barter between the coast Indians and the tribes of the interior. There is so much of it in a candle-fish of ordinary size that when one of them is dried, it will burn like a candle. It is the custom of the natives on the coast to catch the fish in immense numbers in purse-nets. They then boil them in iron-bottomed bins, straining the product in willow baskets, and running the oil into cedar boxes holding fifteen gallons each. The Nasse River candle-fish are the best. They begin running in March, and continue to come by the million for a period of several weeks.
Codfish are supposed to be very plentiful, and to frequent extensive banks at sea, but these shoals have not been explored or charted by the Government, and private enterprise will not attempt the work. Similar banks off the Alaska coast are already the resorts of California fishermen, who drive a prosperous trade in salting large catches there. The skil, or black cod, formerly known as the "coal-fish," is a splendid deep-water product. These cod weigh from eight to twenty pounds, and used to be caught by the Indians with hook and line. Already white men are driving the Indians out by superior methods. Trawls of 300 hooks are used, and the fish are found to be plentiful, especially off the west coast of the Queen Charlotte Islands. The fish is described as superior to the cod of Newfoundland in both oil and meat. The general market is not yet accustomed to it, but such a ready sale is found for what are caught that the number of vessels engaged in this fishing increases year by year. It is evident that the catch of skil will soon be an important source of revenue to the province.
Herring are said to be plentiful, but no fleet is yet fitted out for them. Halibut are numerous and common. They are often of very great size. Sturgeon are found in the Fraser, whither they chase the salmon. One weighing 1400 pounds was exhibited in Victoria a few years ago, and those that weigh more than half as much are not unfrequently captured. The following is a report of the yield and value of the fisheries of the province for 1889:
Kind of Fish.Quantity.Value.Salmon in canslbs.20,122,128$2,414,655 36"       freshlbs.2,187,000218,700 00"       saltedbbls.3,74937,460 00"       smokedlbs.12,9002,580 00Sturgeon, fresh318,60015,930 00Halibut,      "605,05030,152 50Herring,      "190,0009,500 00"       smoked33,0003,300 00Oolachans,    "82,5008,250 00"         fresh6,7001,340 00"         saltedbbls.3803,800 00Trout, freshlbs.14,0251,402 50Fish, assorted322,72516,136 25Smelts, fresh52,1003,126 00Rock cod39,2501,962 50Skil, saltedbbls.1,56018,720 00Fooshqua, fresh268,35013,417 50Fur seal-skinsNo.33,570335,700 00Hair    ""7,0005,250 00Sea-otter skins"11511,500 00Fish oilgals.141,42070,710 00Oysterssacks3,0005,250 00Clams"3,5005,250 00Mussels"250500 00CrabsNo.175,0005,250 00Abelonesboxes100500 00Isinglasslbs.5,0001,750 00Estimated fish consumed in province100,000 00Shrimps, prawns, etc.5,000 00Estimated consumption by Indians—Salmon2,732,500 00Halibut190,000 00Sturgeon and other fish260,000 00Fish oils75,000 00Approximate yield$6,605,467 61
+—————————————+——————+————————-+| Kind of Fish. | Quantity. | Value. || | | ||—————————————+——————+————————-+| | | || Salmon in cans lbs. | 20,122,128 | $2,414,655 36 || " fresh lbs. | 2,187,000 | 218,700 00 || " salted bbls. | 3,749 | 37,460 00 || " smoked lbs. | 12,900 | 2,580 00 || Sturgeon, fresh | 318,600 | 15,930 00 || Halibut, " | 605,050 | 30,152 50 || Herring, " | 190,000 | 9,500 00 || " smoked | 33,000 | 3,300 00 || Oolachans, " | 82,500 | 8,250 00 || " fresh | 6,700 | 1,340 00 || " salted bbls. | 380 | 3,800 00 || Trout, fresh lbs. | 14,025 | 1,402 50 || Fish, assorted | 322,725 | 16,136 25 || Smelts, fresh | 52,100 | 3,126 00 || Rock cod | 39,250 | 1,962 50 || Skil, salted bbls. | 1,560 | 18,720 00 || Fooshqua, fresh | 268,350 | 13,417 50 || Fur seal-skins No. | 33,570 | 335,700 00 || Hair " " | 7,000 | 5,250 00 || Sea-otter skins " | 115 | 11,500 00 || Fish oil gals. | 141,420 | 70,710 00 || Oysters sacks | 3,000 | 5,250 00 || Clams " | 3,500 | 6,125 00 || Mussels " | 250 | 500 00 || Crabs No. | 175,000 | 5,250 00 || Abelones boxes | 100 | 500 00 || Isinglass lbs. | 5,000 | 1,750 00 |+—————————————+——————+ || Estimated fish consumed in province | 100,000 00 || Shrimps, prawns, etc. | 5,000 00 || Estimated consumption by Indians— | || Salmon | 2,732,500 00 || Halibut | 190,000 00 || Sturgeon and other fish | 260,000 00 || Fish oils | 75,000 00 |+———————————————————-+————————-+| Approximate yield | $6,605,467 61 |+———————————————————-+————————-+
When it is considered that this is the showing of one of the newest communities on the continent, numbering only the population of what we would call a small city, suffering for want of capital and nearly all that capital brings with it, there is no longer occasion for surprise at the provincial boast that they possess far more extensive and richer fishing-fields than any on the Atlantic coast. Time and enterprise will surely test this assertion, but it is already evident that there is a vast revenue to be wrested from those waters.
I have not spoken of the sealing, which yielded $236,000 in 1887, and may yet be decided to be exclusively an American and not a British Columbian source of profit. Nor have I touched upon the extraction of oil from herrings and from dog-fish and whales, all of which are small channels of revenue.
I enjoyed the good-fortune to talk at length with a civil engineer of high repute who has explored the greater part of southern British Columbia—at least in so far as its main valleys, waterways, trails, and mountain passes are concerned. Having learned not to place too high a value upon the printed matter put forth in praise of any new country, I was especially pleased to obtain this man's practical impressions concerning the store and quality and kinds of timber the province contains. He said, not to use his own words, that timber is found all the way back from the coast to the Rockies, but it is in its most plentiful and majestic forms on the west slope of those mountains and on the west slope of the Coast Range. The very largest trees are between the Coast Range and the coast. The country between the Rocky Mountains and the Coast Range is dry by comparison with the parts where the timber thrives best, and, naturally, the forests are inferior. Between the Rockies and the Kootenay River cedar and tamaracks reach six and eight feet in diameter, and attain a height of 200 feetnot infrequently. There are two or three kinds of fir and some pines (though not very many) in this region. There is very little leaf-wood, and no hard-wood. Maples are found, to be sure, but they are rather more like bushes than trees to the British Columbian mind. As one moves westward the same timber prevails, but it grows shorter and smaller until the low coast country is reached. There, as has been said, the giant forests occur again. This coast region is largely a flat country, but there are not many miles of it.
To this rule, as here laid down, there are some notable exceptions. One particular tree, called there the bull-pine—it is the pine of Lake Superior and the East—grows to great size all over the province. It is a common thing to find the trunks of these trees measuring four feet in diameter, or nearly thirteen feet in circumference. It is not especially valuable for timber, because it is too sappy. It is short-lived when exposed to the weather, and is therefore not in demand for railroad work; but for the ordinary uses to which builders put timber it answers very well.
There is a maple which attains great size at the coast, and which, when dressed, closely resembles bird's-eye-maple. It is called locally the vine-maple. The trees are found with a diameter of two-and-a-half to three feet, but the trunks seldom rise above forty or fifty feet. The wood is crooked. It runs very badly. This, of course, is what gives it the beautiful grain it possesses, and which must, sooner or later, find a ready market for it. There is plenty of hemlock in the province, but it is nothing like so large as that which is found in the East, and its bark is not so thick. Its size renders it serviceable for nothing larger than railway ties, and the trees grow in such inaccessible places, half-way up the mountains, that it is for the most part unprofitable to handle it. The red cedars—the wood of which is consumed in the manufacture of pencils and cigar-boxes—are also small. On the other hand, the white cedar reaches enormous sizes, up to fifteen feet of thickness at the base, very often. It is not at all extraordinary to find these cedars reaching 200 feet above the ground, and one was cut at Port Moody, in clearing the way for the railroad, that had a length of 310 feet. When fire rages in the provincial forests, the wood of these trees is what is consumed, and usually the trunks, hollow and empty, stand grimly in their places after the fire would otherwise have been forgotten. These great tubes are often of such dimensions that men put windows and doors in them and use them for dwellings. In the valleys are immense numbers of poplars of the common and cottonwood species, white birch, alder, willow, and yew trees, but they are not estimated in the forest wealth of the province, because of the expense that marketing them would entail.
This fact concerning the small timber indicates at once the primitive character of the country, and the vast wealth it possesses in what might be called heroic timber—that is, sufficiently valuable to force its way to market even from out that unopened wilderness. It was the opinion of the engineer to whom I have referred that timberland which does not attract the second glance of a prospector in British Columbia would be considered of the first importance in Maine and New Brunswick. To put it in another way, river-side timber land which in those countries would fetch fifty dollars the acre solely for its wood, in British Columbia would not be taken up. In time it may be cut, undoubtedly it must be, when new railroads alter its value, and therefore it is impossible even roughly to estimate the value of the provincial forests.
A great business is carried on in the shipment of ninety-foot and one-hundred-foot Douglas fir sticks to the great car-building works of our country and Canada. They are used in the massive bottom frames of palace cars. The only limit that has yet been reached in this industry is not in the size of the logs, but in the capacities of the saw-mills, and in the possibilities of transportation by rail, for these logs require three cars to support their length. Except for the valleys, the whole vast country is enormously rich in this timber, the mountains (excepting the Rockies) being clothed with it from their bases to their tops. Vancouver Island is a heavily and valuably timbered country. It bears the same trees as the main-land, except that it has the oak-tree, and does not possess the tamarack. The Vancouver Island oaks do not exceed two or two-and-a-half feet in diameter. The Douglas fir (our Oregon pine) grows to tremendous proportions, especially on the north end of the island. In the old offices of the Canadian Pacific Railway at Vancouver are panels of this wood that are thirteen feet across, showing that they came from a tree whose trunk was forty feet incircumference. Tens of thousands of these firs are from eight to ten feet in diameter at the bottom.
Other trees of the province are the great silver-fir, the wood of which is not very valuable; Englemann's spruce, which is very like white spruce, and is very abundant; balsam-spruce, often exceeding two feet in diameter; the yellow or pitch pine; white pine; yellow cypress; crab-apple, occurring as a small tree or shrub; western birch, common in the Columbia region; paper or canoe birch, found sparingly on Vancouver Island and on the lower Fraser, but in abundance and of large size in the Peace River and upper Fraser regions; dogwood, arbutus, and several minor trees. Among the shrubs which grow in abundance in various districts or all over the province are the following: hazel, red elder, willow, barberry, wild red cherry, blackberry, yellow plum, choke-cherry, raspberry, gooseberry, bearberry, currant, and snowberry, mooseberry, bilberry, cranberry, whortleberry, mulberry, and blueberry.
I would have liked to write at length concerning the enterprising cities of the province, but, after all, they may be trusted to make themselves known. It is the region behind them which most interests mankind, and the Government has begun, none too promptly, a series of expeditions for exploiting it. As for the cities, the chief among them and the capital, Victoria, has an estimated population of 22,000. Its business district wears a prosperous, solid, and attractive appearance, and its detached dwellings—all of frame, and of the distinctive type which marks the houses of the Californiatowns—are surrounded by gardens. It has a beautiful but inadequate harbor; yet in a few years it will have spread to Esquimault, now less than two miles distant. This is now the seat of a British admiralty station, and has a splendid haven, whose water is of a depth of from six to eight fathoms. At Esquimault are government offices, churches, schools, hotels, stores, a naval "canteen," and a dry-dock 450 feet long, 26 feet deep, and 65 feet wide at its entrance. The electric street railroad of Victoria was extended to Esquimault in the autumn of 1890. Of the climate of Victoria Lord Lorne said, "It is softer and more constant than that of the south of England."
Vancouver, the principal city of the main-land, is slightly smaller than Victoria, but did not begin to displace the forest until 1886. After that every house except one was destroyed by fire. To-day it boasts a hotel comparable in most important respects with any in Canada, many noble business buildings of brick or stone, good schools, fine churches, a really great area of streets built up with dwellings, and a notable system of wharves, warehouses, etc. The Canadian Pacific Railway terminates here, and so does the line of steamers for China and Japan. The city is picturesquely and healthfully situated on an arm of Burrard Inlet, has gas, water, electric lights, and shows no sign of halting its hitherto rapid growth. Of New Westminster, Nanaimo, Yale, and the still smaller towns, there is not opportunity here for more than naming.
In the original settlements in that territory a peculiar institution occasioned gala times for the red men now and then. This was the "potlatch," a thing to us so foreign, even in the impulse of which it is begotten, that we have no word or phrase to give its meaning. It is a feast and merrymaking at the expense of some man who has earned or saved what he deems considerable wealth, and who desires to distribute every iota of it at once in edibles and drinkables among the people of his tribe or village. He does this because he aspires to a chieftainship, or merely for the credit of a "potlatch"—a high distinction. Indians have been known to throw away such a sum of money that their "potlatch" has been given in a huge shed built for the feast, that hundreds have been both fed and made drunk, and that blankets and ornaments have been distributed in addition to the feast.
The custom has a new significance now. It is the white man who is to enjoy a greater than all previous potlatches in that region. The treasure has been garnered during the ages by time or nature or whatsoever you may call the host, and the province itself is offered as the feast.
At Revelstoke, 380 miles from the Pacific Ocean, in British Columbia, a small white steamboat, built on the spot, and exposing a single great paddle-wheel at her stern, was waiting to make another of her still few trips through a wilderness that, but for her presence, would be as completely primitive as almost any in North America. Her route lay down the Columbia River a distance of about one hundred and thirty miles to a point called Sproat's Landing, where some rapids interrupt navigation. The main load upon the steamer's deck was of steel rails for a railroad that was building into a new mining region in what is called the Kootenay District, just north of our Washington and Idaho. The sister range to the Rockies, called the Selkirks, was to be crossed by the new highway, which would then connect the valley of the Columbia with the Kootenay River. There was a temptation beyond the mere chance to join the first throng that pushed open a gateway and began the breaking of a trail in a brand-new country. There was to be witnessed the propulsion of civilization beyond old confines by steam-power, and this required railroad building in the Rockies, where that science finds its most formidable problems. And around and through all that was being done pressed a new population, made up of many of the elements that produced our old-time border life,and gave birth to some of the most picturesque and exciting chapters in American History.
It should be understood that here in the very heart of British Columbia only the watercourses have been travelled, and there was neither a settlement nor a house along the Columbia in that great reach of its valley between our border and the Canadian Pacific Railway, except at the landing at which this boat stopped.
Over all the varying scene, as the boat ploughed along, hung a mighty silence; for almost the only life on the deep wooded sides of the mountains was that of stealthy game. At only two points were any human beings lodged, and these were wood-choppers who supplied the fuel for the steamer—a Chinaman in one place, and two or three white men farther on. In this part of its magnificent valley the Columbia broadens in two long loops, called the Arrow Lakes, each more than two miles wide and twenty to thirty miles in length. Their prodigious towering walls are densely wooded, and in places are snow-capped in midsummer. The forest growth is primeval, and its own luxuriance crowds it beyond the edge of the grand stream in the fretwork of fallen trunks and bushes, whose roots are bedded in the soft mass of centuries of forest débris.
Early in the journey the clerk of the steamer told me that wild animals were frequently seen crossing the river ahead of the vessel; bear, he said, and deer and elk and porcupine. When I left him to go to my state-room and dress for the rough journey ahead of me, he came to my door, calling in excited tones for me to come out on the deck. "There's a big bear ahead!" he cried, and as he spoke I saw the black head of the animal cleaving the quiet water close to the nearer shore. Presently Bruin's feet touched the bottom, and he bounded into the bush and disappeared.
The scenery was superb all the day, but at sundown nature began to revel in a series of the most splendid and spectacular effects. For an hour a haze had clothed the more distant mountains as with a transparent veil, rendering the view dream-like and soft beyond description. But as the sun sank to the summit of the uplifted horizon it began to lavish the most intense colors upon all the objects in view. The snowy peaks turned to gaudy prisms as of crystal, the wooded summits became impurpled, the nearer hills turned a deep green, and the tranquil lake assumed a bright pea-color. Above all else, the sky was gorgeous. Around its western edge it took on a rose-red blush that blended at the zenith with a deep blue, in which were floating little clouds of amber and of flame-lit pearl.
A moonless night soon closed around the boat, and in the morning we were at Sproat's Landing, a place two months old. The village consisted of a tiny cluster of frame-houses and tents perched on the edge of the steep bank of the Columbia. One building was the office and storehouse of the projected railroad, two others were general trading stores, one was the hotel, and the other habitations were mainly tents.
I firmly believe there never was a hotel like the hostlery there. In a general way its design was an adaptation of the plan of a hen-coop. Possibly a box made of gridirons suggests more clearly the principle of its construction. It was two stories high, and contained about a baker's dozen of rooms, the main one being the bar-room, of course. After the framework had been finished, there was perhaps half enough "slab" lumber to sheathe the outside of the house, and this had been made to serve for exterior and interior walls, and the floors and ceilings besides. The consequence was that a flock of gigantic canaries might have been kept in it with propriety, but as a place of abode for human beings it compared closely with the Brooklyn Bridge.